Challenging Students’ Religiously Informed Truth Claims: Epistemological and Ethical Considerations for Discourse in Pluralistic Classrooms

Abstract

How do individuals and groups, with often competing interests, worldviews,beliefs, values, and ideas, come together to approximate some sort of productive,civil, pluralistic, democratic order? This question, and others like it, is central topolitical theory. Many thinkers have taken up this general question in wrestling withindividual rights versus community rights, children’s rights vs. parental rights,education vs. indoctrination, and so on. Yet, when it comes to public schoolclassroom discourse related to religion, democracy, pluralism, and respect, treat-ment is far less robust and satisfying.Many liberal political theorists have attempted to address these issues, but havefocused — perhaps overly so — on the development of democratic principles that,while helpful in the political sphere generally, are less useful when applied to publicschool classroom discussions. For example, John Rawls, who epitomizes classicliberal political thought on these matters, argues that in order to develop rules andguidelines by which all reasonable people can live, citizens must shelve theirparticular moral, religious, and philosophical worldviews, relying instead on publicprinciples to which all reasonable people can agree.